Two films that screened to sellout audiences at October’s Bermuda Documentary Film Festival are the featured films at the ‘Weekend Film Series’ on Sunday, November 18. Italy: Love It or Leave It will screen at 3 p.m., while The Imposter – nominated for four British Independent Film Awards — will screen at 5.15 p.m.

Food, wine, art, architecture … Italy defines la dolce vita – the good life – like no other place, making it the country of many a romantic fantasy. But as filmmakers Luca Ragazzi and Gustav Hofer discover in this entertaining, playful and often hilarious film, there is another side to Italy – corrupt politics, social inertia, degraded morality, and environmental neglect – and that has resulted in several of their disenchanted friends leaving the country.

Setting out in a vintage Fiat Uno, the charming twosome set off on a zigzagging tour of Italy, focusing on the beautiful – including a visit to George Clooney’s home on the shores of Lake Como — and weighing it against the less savoury, and ultimately deciding whether they should love Italy, or leave it. The film has won festival awards at Milan, Thessaloniki, Honolulu and Annecy.

Trailer for Italy: Love It or Leave It:

In The Imposter, documentary meets film noir in a jaw-dropping true story that has the twists and turns of a thriller. In 1994 a 13-year-old boy disappears without a trace from San Antonio, Texas. Three and a half years later he is found alive, thousands of miles away in a village in southern Spain with a story of kidnap and torture.

His family is overjoyed to bring him home. But all is not quite as it seems. The boy bears many of the same distinguishing marks he always had, but why does he now have a strange accent? Why does he look so different? And why doesn’t the family seem to notice these glaring inconsistencies? It’s only when an investigator starts asking questions that this strange tale takes an even stranger turn.

The Imposter was nominated in four categories when the British Independent Film Awards announced their list of nominees last week. The film was nominated for Best British Independent Film, Best Documentary, Best Achievement in Production and Best Technical Achievement. Bart Layton was nominated for Best Director and Best Director Debut. The winners will be announced on December 9.

Trailer for The Imposter

Tickets, $15, can be purchased in the Oceans Gift Shop at the BUEI, or by calling 297-7314. The ‘Weekend Film Series’, sponsored by Gosling’s, is a joint production of Bermuda Documentary Film Festival director Duncan Hall and the BUEI.